I wishlisted and eventually bought this game on sale years back because the artstyle looked neat and reminded me of eastern web games from the 2000s! Though I didn't get around to finally playing it until this year.
I will say... Your mileage on the visuals may vary. I personally adore the look of it and the character designs, but it may look a bit cheap to you, and I'd fully understand it.
But either way you should look past that because this is still an EXCELLENT game.
[b]Valdis Story[/b] is an old-ass indie Metroidvania from 2013. Apparently it was a Kickstarter project? Though I missed that whole ordeal since at the time I was just a kid who didn't even know what a Kickstarter was.
It was developed by... I think 4 people or so? Which kind of shows in some aspects, it's not the most visually polished game and there's some little bits of jank here and there. But it's GENUINELY worth playing just for the gameplay and the insane amounts of worldbuilding.
So, the [b]gameplay[/b]!
You know what a Metroidvania is like if you're here, I'm not gonna explain that. But I [i]am[/i] going to explain the combat, because this might as well be a DMC game in 2D.
You have a light attack button, a heavy attack button, a block button, every character has multiple weapons (and unarmed options) with ridiculously unique movesets each, you have a spell button that works directionally ala Smash Bros and can be customized with 6 different elements for each direction.
You have a "skill cancel" mechanic, that you gain more charges of throughout the game, that lets you cancel ANY ACTION IN THE GAME by tapping down, and then chain that into another combo or do an invincible dodge-dash out of it. That alone adds a ridiculous amount of potential to the game.
You have a parry too by the way, tied to perfectly timing block inputs. It leads into a counterattack and interrupts/stuns any enemy, including bosses.
Seriously I cannot stress enough how FUN the combat in this game is. And there's [i]four[/i] playable characters, each with their own specialties (berserker, speedy brawler, ranged gunner+summoner, magic user), AND the skilltree and different weapon options for each of them allows you to customize each of them even more, there's dozens of combinations you could come up with to spice up each playthrough.
Just to give you an idea, the game doesn't tell you this, but Wyatt (the main guy) can just... unequip his sword, and square the ♥♥♥♥ up. And you get this insanely complex fist moveset with an entire stance change system like it's a fighting game, that affects your moveset and gives you different passives depending on what stance you're in????
It's INSANE how much hidden detail there is to the combat here. If you like games with fluid combat and comboing it's worth playing just for that alone.
The [b]music[/b] is... Okay your mileage may also vary on this. It's got a lot of emphasis on rock/metal with a lot of heavy guitar use, even in places where it feels like it doesn't quite fit? But that's also mixed with a lot of orchestral elements and some really good organ use that brings it closer in line to something like a Castlevania soundtrack.
My favorite track is probably the sewer one that has a super funky bassline and organ combined with the guitar, and an odd time signature that makes it sound super unique. I kinda wish more songs in the game had basslines as good as that, honestly.
There's a good amount of music to love! The compositions are good. But do keep in mind it's still very guitar-y and noisy so if that's not your thing (I know it's not mine) you might not really enjoy the music all that much.
The [b]story[/b] is... Okay I'm not sure how I could even begin to explain it, but it's worldbuilding galore. You can tell there were a lot of ideas put here, the story happens pretty much in the middle of whatever universe they've got going on here, you can find 20 different lore books across all 4 characters that give you a bunch of story setup of what happened in this world prior to the events of the game to get it to where it is, and each character gets their own ending showing what happens to them in the future so there's a LOT of cliffhangers and questions about what might happen next, because the story and conflict escalate more and more the further in you get.
There's entire wars going on between gods, each with their own factions, as well as secondary sub-factions, there's conflicts involving angels and demons and humans, each faction has their own kind of brainwashing going on to paint themselves as the good guys, there were plenty of other gods before, gods CAN be killed and that's a major plot point... If anything it makes me wish this game got a sequel because by the end of my fourth playthrough I was GENUINELY kind of invested in these characters and wanted to see what'd happen to them next. Or get to play through that in some way, because it really does end in a super open (hopeful and relatively good-ish, but still very open) way.
There's absolute autistic levels of worldbuilding here so if you like that stuff you'll absolutely get a kick out of it.
I do have some [b]gripes[/b] with the game, mind you. I wanna warn you of that, as much as I still recommend the game overall.
The [b]map[/b] isn't great. Like, you get a map for each area, you can bring it up mid-gameplay with L1 to avoid needing to pause, that's good. However, you can NEVER SEE A MAP OF THE WHOLE GAME. You have to go into each area manually just to be able to bring up its map. You don't see how areas connect to each other either, the area map just shows where exits are and not where they [i]lead[/i] to.
100%ing exploration and items can be kind of a pain because of this. Mind you, the map isn't GIGANTIC and after several playthroughs you can start remembering how all the areas connect pretty well, but it's not the most intuitive to get into blind.
There's also a lot of [b]permanent missables[/b]. As in, events will happen, and if you advance the story too much entire towns with important merchants will be permanently wiped out for the rest of that playthrough, locking you out of 100%.
It does work for story purposes (and you can get some alternate cutscenes from it which are super good story-wise) but... MAN it's annoying. There's an optional boss you have to remember is sitting in a prior area you ran away from, and if you don't kill it before you advance the plot an entire unrelated town gets wiped. There's a sidequest involving fixing a mana heater and if you don't figure out how to get and charge a new core for them (or if you miss the NPC that starts that quest) that town dies pretty much as soon as you finish the story events that require being there. I wish this stuff was made clearer and harder to miss.
Also for some reason there's this weird freeze-frame effect that happens a lot during combat? Finishers trigger it a lot, and some heavier moves also do that. I think it's supposed to be there for impact emphasis, but the way it literally locks up the whole game every time it happens makes it feel more like the game is lagging/stuttering more than an intentional freeze-frame. I know this is made in GameMaker so I suspect they might've just used the sleep() function which is the single most amateur way to go about doing this.
...Also this game HATES being unfocused when you're in fullscreen. If you Alt+Tab out of it it'll just straight up softlock and need a force-close and restart. Dunno how they missed that.
In any case, yapping aside, I [b]still absolutely recommend this game[/b]! The gameplay and the story/worldbuilding are great, if a little bit edgy at points. The music's pretty solid too. This is a game that's absolutely worth playing and that I wish got a sequel.
Just keep in mind it's not the most polished game out there and it's got a few design issues and some technical jank to it.
